We got woken up for Christmas with coffee and frothy milk. Somehow, our three children have gone from the 5 a.m. giddiness of “Get up, get up!” to letting us sleep in until gone 8 a.m., and only then gently suggesting that it would be good to go downstairs to see if Santa’s been.
“Of course he has been!” our youngest daughter said. “And guess what, Dad? Santa drank all the beer we left him. He got drugged!”
She meant “drunk.”
But that didn’t slow the 10-year-old from telling us that Santa and his reindeer had made a mess of the fire place, ashes strewn, footsteps still showing.
Yet we still lay in bed.
We were spent. It wasn’t just that we’d stayed up late for the preparations. It was the year, the money worries, the work. The medical scares and an operation, and a long recovery, and the kids — the two teens and the pre-teen got scared. The arts for us parents got left aside, this blog too, for the grind of making ends meet, of rushing, of worrying.
Then came the holidays and you take a break, and your eyes fall shut, your body says, “That’s enough.” You can’t go on. You’re a zombie. The pillow is your friend. So rest, recover. The grind awaits again.
But today your kids understand that you are tired, and they let you sleep.
They waited patiently until the color of our faces brightened and the dog had jumped on the bed three times. Those were the cues for us to head downstairs.
We opened presents and had a slow breakfast, and then, the joy, I had a midmorning nap that ran until noon. We were together as a family, and the kids were still wide-eyed at life, and us parents not totally jaded. There’s still some magic in life, maybe more than we think. Even when we found the turkey had rotted in our old fridge, it didn’t sour the day. We put potatoes on to bake and piled the salads higher. The kids set the table. We were together, and that was enough.
